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Show Stock market ee) eerte Bond buyer Commodities Mortgagerates 30 industrials, daily close N. Utah companies, avg. weekly close 20 municipal bonds, Friday close 21 key commodities, Friday close Conv. 30-year mortgage,at par 3450 3150 A 3400 wt. 75 3100 . 3350 3300 \ lV yw 3250 230 7.0 Sy 3050 3000 6.5 \ 2950 9.5% 220 ettLt _— X 205 5.5 200 IS IN ‘ 8.5% | > | | | | 9.0% 210 6.0 | ry = | TT 8.0% 7.5% | || 1 1§ 22 29 5 12 19 263 10 15 22 29 5 12 19 263 10 158 22 29:5 1219 263.10 15 22 29 5 12 19 26 3 10 15 22 29 5 12 19 26 3 10 May May May May May June July June July June July Bond data from Shearson, Lehman Brothers STANDARD-EXAMINER June July Commodities data from Shearson, Lehman Brothers June July Standard-Examiner BUSINESS SUNDAY, JULY 12, 1992 BUSINESS EDITOR: 625-4244 WEEK’S REVIEW Buyers may balk at cars Buck stops here Edward A. Brennan and Sears, Roebuck and Co. are inseparable, even in hard 4D times. By DAVID J. MORROW Preciousfiles Knight-Ridder Newspapers ROCHESTERHILLS, Mich. — If your next-door neighbor ever . buys an electric car, be sure and Backup programs can save your life in a pinch. 3D look both ways before you cross the street. You'll get bowled over if you don’t. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t hear an electric car coming. ; General Motors Corp. and a few other car manufacturers are betting big bucks that you’ll soon be sweating the whereabouts of your neighbor’s electric vehicle (EV). Perhaps you'll even own one yourself. EVs may be the ’90s rage for certain metropolitan UTAH LOCAL Exec investigated SALT LAKE CITY — Former Bonneville Pacific Corp. executive John T. Dunlop appearsto be the focus of a multijurisdictional investigation into the dealings of the now-bankrupt company. Thiokol trims jobs drivers, BRIGHAM CITY — Job thanks to the handiworkofstate casualties continue to mount lawmakers. By 1998, manufactur- from Thiokol's efforts to ers that sell more than 35,000 cars in New York and California must certify that 2 percent of their fleets are zero-emission vehicles. Right now that means EVs. , A few EVs are already rolling on America’s highways, but all of them are converted makes. GM will unleash its Impact — an EV built from scratch — in the mid90s, with plans of capturing a large chunk of the market. Several roadblocks stand in GM's path, not the least of which is the market itself. Lawmakers have mandated that carmakers consolidate its operations as the company announced in a memodistributed to Strategic Operations employees thatit will trim 130 workers on July 28. Volvo, Iraqi ties SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's congressional delegation urged the federal government's Export-Import Bank to help fund a Volvo-GM truck-assembly plant in Iraq — put EVs on the road, but no one has required consumers to buy them. Some industry experts worry now that car buyers may sim- AUGUST MILLER/Standard-Examiner Joe LaStella, president of B.A.T. Technology, shows why the battery technology his company developed is in the trunk. ply pass them over. “There’s always an initial consumer shock with every new form of transportation,” said Tom Dukes, a market analyst with J.D. Power & Associates, a California- based automotive consultant. “It’s going to be difficult for EV makers to cometo grips with the $1 a gallon price in gas. I’m not sure where the initial use is going to be.” and other EVs because they’re un- derperformers when compared to their current wheels. With two seats, the Impact won't be able to haul a neighborhood of kids to a baseball game ortravel long distances for weekends away. The Mayissue of the J.D. Power Report, the firm’s monthly newsletter, says that “overselling environmental expectations or product performance benefits (of EVs) will kill the electric vehicle industry.” Some shrewd marketing may uncoil somesnares. Thefirst step, though, is to understand the EV pros and cons. Unlike roadsters such as the Ford Explorer, EVs are custom-built for urban drivers. Folks who live in Los Angeles do daily battle with smog and noise, and EVs remedy both problems. EVs look like most sports cou- pes from the outside, but open the hood andthe differences become obvious. Instead of gasoline, EVs are powered by batteries, which must be recharged daily. In GM’s electric prototypes, there is no gear stick or sound when you turn the ignition. You don’t knowthecar is running until see the flashing green light on the dash. See ELECTRIC on 2D EXPECTATIONS Electric WSUin hybnd cartest By THOMAS THORSCH KRADER EA Standard-Examiner staff @ CHRYSLER: Companywill be OGDEN — In the worldwide quest to build a practical electric car, Weber State University has the first to sell electric cars. entered the fray. It is one of 30 schools selected from a pool of 67 to compete in the Ford Hybrid Electric Vehicle Challenge, a contest to design a car that’s part gas, part electric. The WSU team hasonly to look to Salt Lake City and Battery Automated Transportation Technology Inc. for a taste of the rocky road facing electric car inventors. In its 1% years of existence, B.A.T. has built two sharplooking electric cars that have madetrips to Wendover, performed at the Bonneville Speedway 2D stand their company’s deteriorating performance and hiring scores of consultants to help them find the reasons, As some consultants described the situation, corporate manage- ment asked them to find out why, ' was low and production efficiency poor. Could the consultants find the reasons why? Of course, the consultants responded, and they immediatelyinterviewed workers in company shops and on assemblylines, in division offices and plants and wher‘ OGDEN — Thelatest round of interest rate cuts has sparked someinterest among homeowners who may have missed out in January and February, but Realtors, mortgage bankers and homeownersare divided over how much home-buying demandtherates will spawn. WASHINGTON — Producer prices rose amodest0.2 | percent in June as decreases in vegetable, meat, auto and tobacco costs helped offset a run-up in oil prices, the government said. David Erb, an assistant professor of manufacturing and mechanical engineering at the university and head of WSU’s pursuit of victory in the nationwide contest. The See WEBER on 2D Weinstock’s funds AUGUST MILLER/Standard-Examiner Joe LaStella and Mike Near, an employee of B.A.T. Technology, _—+hope to markettheir battery-operated car someday. University assistant professor David Erb. California has already mandated hybrids for a small percentage of cars sold by dealers in the state by the end of the decade, he said. For short trips like driving to work, a hybrid would run onelectricity, he said. “But flip a switch and the mode would change to gas,” he said. While running on gas, age range electric cars don’t, said Weber State AP business analyst Cuts spark buying Producer costs up OGDEN — Automobile experts believe the hybrid electric car is a viable option to today’s gas consuming vehicles. Andin the future, hybrid cars could outperform electric cars because they have the mile- ' aa Boulevard and U.S. company has not been able to strike a much-pursued joint venture with Utah Powerand has only now found a likely major investor, said B.A.T. spokesman Bob Martino. WeberState will have to negotiate someserious turns, too, said Standard-Examiner staff JOHN CUNNIFF property at the intersection at NATIONAL By THOMAS THORSCH KRADER news and its contrast with repeated million office park promises to bring life to long-vacant 500 in Phoenix. Despite those achievements, the Hybrid vehicles are designed to perform oneither voltage or gas NEW YORK — The continuation of disappointing economic Crossroads Landings, a $3.2 and raced at the Solar and Electric the electric battery would be regenerated, he said, A newbattery is expected to be tested soon that would give a range of 200- to 300-miles on a charge that will take only 15 minutes, according to the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, an agreement among the Big Three See CLEAN on 2D Forget experts, talk to people for economicsituation White House assurances is generating talk that President Bush doesn’t know what’s happening on the assemblyline. The reference is to that time in the 1970s when corporate managers were desperately seeking to under- Offices planned SOUTH OGDEN — Observers also worry that car buyers may balk at the Impact one year before strongman Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Ogden Volvo plant would have benefited. ever else they could obtain firsthand information. The interviews were compiled, computed, analyzed, interpreted and charted, then bound with a gold-stamped cover and presented to management with a cover letter and a bill. The point is obvious: Managements often could have had answers for the asking but were so ritualized in their thinking, so accustomed to seeking esoteric explanations, they never thought to ask those who had the answers. In the same sense, some critics nowsay the president should have 5 been less reliant on advice from is expanding, and that conditions economic analysts, in-house advisers and theorists whose information loop excludes the ordinary producers and consumers of America. Consumers, for example, are responsible for two-thirds of gross domestic product. While myriad factors are involved in an economy, the bottom line, so to speak, is whether consumers earn or don’t in general are improving — if only people would understand. ger, whose researchers call 5,000 households a month. “The economic issues on the minds of peo- earn and spend or don't spend. Co. calculated that 66.9 percent of Clearly, they haven't been spending, and that undermines promises from the White House that the recession is over, that the economy You can’t tell them what they know isn’t so, says Albert Sindlin- ple are lower incomes, job insecurity and a sense of drift,” he says. In its latest survey, Sindlinger & U.S. households believe their income is down from six months ago, not just from shorter hours or See CUNNIFF on 2D \ LOS ANGELES — Seeking to emerge from bankruptcy protection, the parent company of Weinstock’s wants to hand over 75 percent ownership to a “vulture fund” that bought its debt. Amoco cuts jobs CHICAGO — Amoco Corp. said it will cut 8,500 jobs by the end of 1993 and take an $800 million after-tax charge in the second quarter to cover restructuring costs. MD-12 still alive ST. LOUIS — McDonnell Douglas Corp. has nointention of abandoning its vital MD-12 project despite setbacks plaguing the super-jumbojet and reports that a proposed partnership with Taiwan Aerospace Corp. is crumbling. Humana maysplit LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Humana Inc, directors authorized management to explore restructuring of the troubled health-care chain into two separate publicly held corporations, one operating Humana hospitals; the other administering Humana Health Care plans. — Standard-Examinerstaff and wire services ‘ |